If I get enough time, I was going to be a douchebag for Hallowing. Gel my hair and throw on some Aberocrombie so I can pop my collar and curl my upper lip. I just wanna see how long I can take that one before someone catches on. I'll have to top it off with the shades on my head.

I wanted to be an INS agent. Since i work at a restaurant, and I was working on halloween, it would have been perfect "Oh **** wei, la migra!!". Oh well, I am finding it hard to spend money on things that don't make the miata keep running, or go fast.

I participate in a friend's haunted garage. Pics can be seen here. I'm the one in the werewolf mask, guarding the candy. If you click the walkthrough link at the bottom of the page, it gives you an idea of the whole setup. It's a huge job to set everything up, but gets a lot of praise from those who see it.

Every year gets more elaborate. Mark programs the sounds, voices and lights, all syncronized to the movements. Each scene is triggered by sensors as the people walk through. I do the mechanical bits. The various monsters talk, groan and move. The one in front of the fireplace scene even breathes, which really creeps people out. You can see a video of the first animatronic we made at the link above (done in 2003, I think). Several of the individual monsters are controlled by small key fob remotes, so we can turn off the scarier stuff for small kids.

Last year was his best ever, with over 140 people going through (we use the candy as a count). He got a front page write-up in the local town newspaper. This year we had less than 100.